A harvester to collect records from an OAI-PMH enabled provider. The harvester can be used to carry out one-time harvesting of all records from a particular OAI-PMH provider by giving its base URL. It can also be used for selective harvesting, e.g. to harvest only records updated after, or before specified dates. To assist in regular harvesting from one or more OAI-PMH providers, there's a provider registry. It is possible to associate a short memorable name for a provider with its base URLs, destination directory for harvested records, and the format (metadataPrefix) in which records should be harvested. The registry will also record the date and time of the most recent harvest, and automatically add this to subsequent requests in order to avoid repeatedly harvesting unmodified records. ENHANCEMENTS Check that specified URL is an OAI-PMH server before attempting to harvest